Unit 7, Period 8 HISTORICAL ANALYSIS – Comparison… Roaring Twenties & Fabulous Fifties The purpose of this activity is to reinforce comparison, argumentation, and document analysis /interpretation skills. From the 2015 Revised Framework: Students will…COMPARE & CONTRAST… 1. Compare diverse perspectives represented in primary and secondary sources in order to draw conclusions about one or more historical events. 2. Compare different historical individuals, events, developments, and/ or processes, analyzing both similarities and differences in order to draw historically valid conclusions. Comparisons can be made across different time periods, across different geographical locations, and between different historical events or developments within the same time period and/ or geographical location. Prompt: Compare and contrast American society in the 1920’s with that of the 1950’s. To what extent were these two decades similar? Directions: Using your prior knowledge, new knowledge gained from the reading assignment and additional information provided in the additional notes, complete the Venn diagram. When your Venn is complete, proceed to the questions below. Are there more similarities or differences? Why? (list two reasons) 1. 2. Write a thesis using your thesis formula: Historical Analysis Activity written by Rebecca Richardson, Allen High School using the 2015 Revised College Board Advanced Placement United States history framework, released College Board exams, and sources as cited in document. Unit 7, Period 8 HISTORICAL ANALYSIS – Comparing and Contrasting 1920s and 1950s DIRECTIONS: Read/Review the notes provided, highlight main ideas about the 1920s yellow, main ideas about the 1950s green, and main ideas addressing both blue. Consider how you would use at least three specific items and at least three generalities to help you develop and defend a thesis comparing the 1920s and the 1950s. Is there anything you would add? What’s missing? TECHNOLOGY INTOLERANCE LITERARY MOVEMENTS Many aspects of mass culture that surface in the 1920s would The intolerance so widespread during the 1920s had not entirely died out by the 1950s, The literature of the 1920s expressed the outburst of African American be magnified in the 1950s along with new technologies of but entrenched opponents to reform now found major changes taking place nonetheless, culture as well as the works of many other American authors analyzing, production and distribution. with a number of minority groups now better prepared to fight for change. questioning, critiquing elements of American life. Breakthroughs in medicine were matched by breakthroughs in The 1920s were marked by the extremes of the Ku Klux Klan at its political peak, the While the resurgence of black culture would actually take place in the the technology of war. pervasiveness of Jim Crow laws in the South, violence against African Americans and 1960s, there was an array of minority/ethnic writers who were depicting continued lynchings, as well as heightened concerns and dissatisfaction with southern life and culture in their groups, while here, too, an array of other The 1920s saw advances in silent and sound movies, and eastern European immigrants, especially those tied to homelands or espousing left- American authors were analyzing and dissecting American society as phonographs, automobiles, airplanes, home appliances, the wing political ideas. Anti-radicalism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Semitism contributed to their forebears had done in the 1920s. telephone, mass circulation of magazines, and an emphasis on the concerns fueling the movement to restrict immigration. consumer products and consumer buying on credit: Literature in the 1920s included two important streams: one associated refrigerators, washing machines, electric irons, vacuum Fundamentalism expanded and gained notoriety with the Scopes trial. Reactions to the with the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes, Claude cleaners, and the introduction of auto service stations, grocery Scopes trial and the trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, executed on the McKay, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston; and a second stream stores, and new techniques of advertising. basis of insubstantial evidence despite strong protests, revealed the climate of that included those taking a more critical view of American society and intolerance of the decade, as did the anti-Catholicism that contributed to Al Smith’s the superficiality of the 1920s, or trying to capture the radical cultural The 1920s marked the beginning of the radio age, as the defeat in the 1928 presidential election. Additionally, the Catholic Church displayed changes associated with Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties. The 1950s would be the beginning of the age of television. The intolerance of Mexicans in the Southwest because of cultural differences in their latter included William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, H. L. Mencken, decade also saw the extensive electrification of the United Catholicism. Walter Lippmann, Eugene O’Neill, Sinclair Lewis, and Ernest States along with the beginning of highway construction and Hemingway. Some of the writers were included among those known as the enormous impact of the automobile on American life and The Roaring Twenties masked considerable prejudice against minority races and the Lost Generation. manners. immigrants. The 1950s continued to see racial violence and lynchings and racial murders (including that of Emmett Till), a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, and the formation of the Another significant development roughly associated with literature in Symbolizing the advances and its identification with American Citizens Councils. However, the United States also began to see desegregation in the the 1920s was the emergence of the mass circulation magazines, character and culture was Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight to military, in baseball, and in schools (as a result of Brown v. Board of Education), followed including Saturday Evening Post, Look, Life, Reader’s Digest, and Europe. by boycotts against segregated public transportation (Rosa Parks and Martin Luther Lady’s Home Journal. King, Jr.), Little Rock High School, and the 1957 Civil Rights Act. The 1950s witnessed innovations in televisions (setting the The 1950s saw important works that challenged the postwar United decade as the era of television and its immense cultural Practices that were widespread in the 1920s began to come under attack, with a new States and the conformity that reflected the banality of the decade. impact), continued mass production of mainstream magazines generation more willing to fight prejudice, particularly among African Americans and Some works were beginning to challenge the pressures toward that influenced American culture as did TV sitcoms, jet planes, Mexican Americans. There was also a marked decline in anti-Semitism and wider consensus, such as Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, David Reisman’s faster means of travel and federal funding of interstate acceptance of the United States as a nation of Judeo–Christian traditions—that is, an The Lonely Crowd, Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders, and highways (contributing to a resurgence of movement to the America based on toleration of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Ethnic identities were William Whyte’s The Organization Man. Other works, such as those by suburbs), improved kitchen appliances, mass production of muted; religious ones were celebrated. Norman Mailer, portrayed Second World War experiences. As James houses (Levittown), along with other life-saving innovations Baldwin and Ralph Ellison expressed much of the African American such as the polio vaccine and other antibiotics. There was a renewed fear of communism, and many leftists were seen as communists. experiences, Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud depicted Jewish The latter were compelled to testify or were forced out of jobs. The Julius and Ethel American life, and Alan Ginsberg portrayed the Beat fringe and an Technology represented the potential destructiveness of Rosenberg case and their execution for spying reinforced apprehensions. McCarthyism emerging counterculture. While such signs of change were just nuclear war and the environmental consequences of prevailed for a time, and political dissent was viewed with much fear, as shown in the beginning and a new era of literature would soon flourish in the 1960s, technological advances, but also the promise of a better world, passage of the McCarran Internal Security and Immigration Acts. The official adoption of especially in reaction to the 1950s, the movies, television, and represented by the growth of electronics and the introduction “One Nation Under God” as a national motto to be included on currency and elsewhere magazine mass media captured the emphases on religion and family, of computers, and scientific advancements, symbolized by and “under God” in the pledge of allegiance also could be a sign of intolerance to symbolized by the massive sales of Benjamin Spock’s Common Sense Sputnik. atheists. Book of Baby and Child Care. Historical Analysis Activity written by Rebecca Richardson, Allen High School using the 2015 Revised College Board Advanced Placement United States history framework, released College Board exams, and sources as cited in document. Unit 7, Period 8 HISTORICAL ANALYSIS – Comparing and Contrasting 1920s and 1950s Analyze each document using your three step strategy. Prompt: Compare and contrast American society in the 1920’s with that of the 1950’s.